Traced freezing problem...

I have finally deciphered a pattern in the "random" freezing experienced recently. The computer as it is now is running perfectly and well behaved. I've noticed so long as I don't open and play Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War: Earth Assault the computer stays on stable footing. The latter game (Universe at War) was torrented a month ago. I have done extensive anti virus scans and anti spyware scans, along with scans for rootkits, dialers, keyloggers, you name it all came up clean including the ones done at the time of unpacking and installation of the torrented game. Universe at War has a reputation of freezing PCs though I did not know that at the time it has to do with a glitch in the game code.

However what bothers me is that Empire at War, a game that runs flawlessly for me, started exhibiting the same signs. I admit I hadn't played Empire at War for about 6 months and never uninstalled it but that shouldn't cause it to malfunction, should it?

Anyway I have to gather up the courage to test the other games on my Hard Drive, of which there are many to test. Some games like Medieval 2 and Combat Arms seem unaffected and don't freeze the system though I have played these games regularly even up till today.

Another interesting thing is if I do somehow trigger a computer freeze it seems to fix itself if I spend extended periods of time in Safe Mode. I would say the system files are corrupt, but if I avoid playing the affected games the computer does not freeze.

Can somebody please help me make sense of my findings? I understand Petroglyph needs to fix Universe at War. But Empire at War never caused me problems. Could Universe at War's glitch somehow spilt over into Empire at War? And if I reinstall Empire at War and re patch it will that fix the game? The system from what I can tell is not at fault. And all diagnostic scans of memory, motherboard, and hard drive come up clean. I did a quick scan last night of the hard drive due to a misinterpreted beep from Avira (I thought it was a BIOS beep, it wasn't I forgot to turn off Avira's audio alert feature. LOL) and all was clean.

 

It is possible that the one 'glitchy' game can effect the other game if they both share the same files. Many programs share files. For example: many games will use the same DirectX files, many other programs will share system DLL files, etc. If the coding problem in the faulty game re-wrote a shared file, then the 'healthy' game my become unstable if it uses the poorly coded shared file. If in doubt, uninstall both games, then reinstall the 'healthy' game and see how it reacts. Also, games acquired via torrents are famous for being unstable and problematic, never mind the fact that acquiring software this way is illegal and is the same as walking in to a store, picking up the game, and walking out without paying... it's stealing.

 

I did a chkdsk a couple of days ago. It came up clean. 0 Bytes in Bad Sectors.

 

I'll schedule a boot time MemTest for tonight. And then a User Mode one for tomorrow. When I wake up in the morning I'll tell you how it went.

Gateway GM5478 with Windows Vista 32 bit SP 0

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Kentfield) @ 2.4 GHz
2 GB DDR2 RAM
Western Digital 500 GB HDD @ 7200 RPM
Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality

Yes, if I avoid using the misbehaving games the PC runs fine. I'm going into day 3 here and not one freeze whatsoever and the PC is running fine. I have the store bought version of Enemy Territory Quake Wars and while I have not played it since before the freezing started when I did run it it was fine. I have FEAR Combat which is the free version of FEAR's multiplayer mode. It runs fine. I have some games I have to test out as well.

The inside of the PC is kept clean I don't let dust collect. I have CoreTemp running always the temperature is usually between 30 C and 50 C at it's highest with the average usually around a stable 33 C I've checked the motherboard specs all of these temperatures are well within safety limits.

I'll do a fresh MemTest tonight I'll set it before going to bed. I've done several MemTests since the freezing problem arose and they all came back with no errors. The same with my Western Digital Diagnostic. I did one with HD Tune. I used the shareware of Hot CPU Tester to get a idea of the state of my motherboard (I'm looking for a better diagnostic freeware motherboard tester). I've run tests on almost all computer componets I can't find any defects in the hardware, lord knows I tried, because if it was hardware related I'd like to know now rather then later.

I must say this is the wierdest computer glitch I've seen so far.

 

I ran MemTest in boot-time last night as ordered. It ran overnight and made 7 complete passes of RAM and found zero errors.